WAYNE — For four Maine authors Maine is the setting for their work. On Friday, June 24, at Cary Memorial Library, poet Carol Bachofner, novelist Kevin C. Mills and local historians Fran Houston and Eleanor Richardson will discuss why.
The free event, running from 4 to 6 p.m., will include readings, a question-and-answer session and book signings. It will be moderated by Betsy Connor Bowen.
Bachofner, who grew up in York and returned to Maine after years of living in the arid climate of the California desert, has written two volumes of poetry: “Breakfast at the Brass Compass: Poems of Mid-coast Maine” and “I Write in the Greenhouse.”
Houston lives on Peak’s Island, which provided inspiration for her book of photographs and oral history, “For the Love of Peaks.” Born in New Jersey, she left at age 17 to travel across the country and to Europe. With a degree in electrical engineering, she practiced controls design for 10 years and then fell in love with and moved to Maine while dealing with a chronic illness. “’For the Love of Peaks’ is my way of giving back to a community that has healed me,” she writes.
Mills is an award-winning journalist at the Lewiston Sun Journal. He has written two books: a novel, “Sons and Daughters of the Ocean” and a nonfiction work, “Sidelined.” His novel is based loosely on his family maritime history. “Sidelined “is an off-beat look at his misadventures during a sports journalism career with some of New England’s top newspapers.
Richardson has summered in North Haven since she was 2, and, in 1992, traveled around in a rowboat gathering stories from 90 families for North Haven Summers. The collection of stories was reprinted in 2009. In 2002, she and her husband, Peter, retired in Rockland, in a house built by his great-grandfather. Exploring her new neighborhood, she dug up some history as well as inspiration for writing “Mechanic Street: Uncovering the History of a Maine Neighborhood.”
Bowen began writing her debut novel, “Spring Bear,” set in the imaginary woods town of Soper’s Mills, just after she discovered a house beside a lake in central Maine. She published it after she and her husband retired to live there. It won a 2009 Maine Literary Award.
Cary Memorial Library is at 17 Old Winthrop Road, just off Route 133 in the downtown. For more information, call 685-3612.
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